


A Series of Rooms

by punkwarren (snakejolras)



Category: Graceland (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:05:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snakejolras/pseuds/punkwarren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are rooms you enter in life, and there are rooms you never get out of. The rooms stay in you. ; Mike Warren character oneshot/drabble</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Series of Rooms

It is January 1st, 2015 and Mike Warren is dead. It is New Years Day and Mike Warren is sitting in a hotel room in Mexico, with a television that keeps losing signal and turning into discoloured fuzz and it reminds him of fighting with the tv in his grandparents bedroom. His Spanish is getting better, and most of that has to do with the fucked up television because the last time he left the room may have been two days ago, and he feels like he’s starting to lose his goddamn mind. The world as he knows it has been reduced to this room and this screen, and his eyes are starting to blur and he’s starting to feel like maybe his heart never restarted and that this is Hell, or purgatory, he hasn’t quite decided which, and he has given it some great thought. Both are an eternity, which would explain why he can’t seem to leave, but purgatory would be more like a waiting room. This felt like one, the deep gut dropping pit of your soul making you sick, and the stir crazy feeling you can’t get anywhere even when you’re moving. Then again, being stuck with that feeling for an eternity also sounded like the kind of Hell he would be given, the kind he would deserve. So maybe it was purgatory, maybe it was Hell, maybe the two weren’t mutually exclusive.

 

He knows that he has entered a new year sitting in this room, this room he despises, and he wants to get the fuck out of it. The room does not feel like a room, it feels like whispers, and the television static feels like it is made of ghosts. He feels trapped, he feels like he is still running out of oxygen, and if he doesn’t get out soon he might scream. He closes his eyes and all he sees are parts of his life that he doesn’t want to see, and all he wants is a door to open that stays that way, a light that actually stays on, something tangible that makes him feel like more than he is right now, more than he’s ever felt as he is.

 

This room is locked, not physically but metaphorically, and this room is suffocating him.

 

-

 

It is September-something, 2014. God if he fucking knows right now, and god if he fucking cares. There’s a bullet in his side and his mind feels like it’s flooding with murky water and every other part of him feels like it’s on fire. He is in a room that is made of nothing, it is a warehouse someone forgot just as much as he will be forgotten, as much as he will be brushed under the rug and made invisible for crimes he didn’t commit. He is no longer FBI Agent Michael Warren, top of his class at Quantico. He is no longer the “rockstar” that took down Jangles, who shot a man and got promoted instead of counseled. All of that will be gone, because he can’t put a crinkle in the fabric, the hypocritical hierarchy is alive and well and it will push him into the ground because he is nothing now. His life has been clawed away, turned into something unrecognizable and it’s his fault, isn’t it? It always is, that’s the general consensus.

 

One question test: There is a man, and this man is an arsonist. The man sets fire to your home while you’re gone, and then he calls you to backyard to watch the flames go up. You had no means by which to stop him, and you had no prior knowledge that he knew where you lived. But you knew he was an arsonist. Does that make the fire your fault?

 

All signs point to yes.

 

This room is hollowed out and burned, and there is always fire destroying and consuming wherever he happens to be.

 

-

 

It is August 3rd, 2014. He knows this because this is the date that he puts on the letter, this is the date he sends to Kiev as a fallacy. This is the date that she burns, that he burns, that the room burns. This room smells like fear and death and it makes his skin crawl, and all he wants is to be out of it. She deserves better than this and he deserves far, far worse. He is not sure how he got into this room, and he does not know that he will ever leave it. It was a matter of choosing the sword to plunge into, and he chose his own, at least he can control where it lands.

 

The sword is still in him, in his throat, in his lungs, and his soul, and it is made of the smoke that she turns into. The room is still there because he can’t get the sword out, but nobody else seems to notice it, the room never let him go and instead he is invisible. He writes so she will not be.

 

He sends the date to Kiev to pretend someone got out of this room alive.

 

-

 

It is July 17th, 2014. This room is in Graceland, it is the bed he has never felt fully belonging in. This room is him unable to fall asleep because he doesn’t know if he’ll keep breathing if he does. This room is him still feeling the plastic over his face, the sharp pain in his lungs and the fighting drive telling him _get out, get out, get information, do_ something. This room is him feeling utterly alone and unwanted, and trying to get past the feeling that the minute he relaxes is the minute he’ll be dead.

 

It is also October 21st, 2013. This room is still Graceland, and he’s not sure he feels himself. He feels something trying to be him, he feels something that makes him want to bury his face into the bed and wait for the sound of the ocean to be the only thing he hears or feels. This is a room he wants to love, this is one that he looks out the window of and sees the surrounding rooms, and in the surrounding rooms are the people he does love. Their doors are unlocked but his never is, and he’s clawing at it trying to let them know he’ll let it be open, but he’s not sure they want to come inside.

 

This room is the one he fell asleep outside of and woke up in, this is the room that almost feels like home but something is just off balance. The more he waits the more he is sure the thing that is off balance is him.

 

-

 

It is December 1st, 2011 and it’s snowing outside. That’s not a significant detail, it’s New York in the middle of winter, but it’s one that seemed important to Mike at the time. It felt appropriate, it felt heartbreakingly surreal, which is what he was hoping for. Unreality. He doesn’t want this room to be real. This room is the room that was his grandfather’s once, the room that is now empty, the room that belongs to an emptiness in him. This room is the first time in his life that he is sure that he is one hundred percent alone. He watches the snow from the window because that feels right, what is outside the room feels right.

 

The room? The room doesn’t. This room is the one he’s hoping will fade away, and the room he wants to go into will unlock again. The room that has always been the one he knows will welcome him in.

 

-

 

It is sometime in February, 2003. He is thirteen years old and he’s terrified of what is in front of him, because what is in front of him feels hollow and cold and he feels like he should scream or do something, but he’s not moving. He’s just staring. This room is the kitchen of his childhood home, this room is a suburban white tile floor being stained by pools of blood, this is room where his father died. There’s a gun on the floor next to his father but Mike won’t look at it, _won’t look, won’t look_ because he doesn’t want to know if that gun belonged to his father or it’s the one that is supposed to belong to him.

 

His father is taken away and the blood goes away and the kitchen is white again, but to Mike the room is still red. Mike is not in the room when they take his father away but he still feels as though he is. His mother is crying and he’s not doing anything, and he’s not sure what’s wrong with him. There is sadness here, there is sadness in that room, and he doesn’t know why he can’t show it. All he knows is he never looked at the gun, and he never looked for his again. His grandfather tells him the gun doesn’t matter when Mike isn’t the one who pulled the trigger. The room is still red.

 

_You know this person is an arsonist._

 

-

 

It is the summer of 1995, and Mike is seven. The room is his grandparents bedroom, with the television that can never seem to focus in one place, that makes it look like all the people on it are running; sometimes it bugs him, sometimes he finds it more interesting. He doesn’t always want to watch the tv but his grandfather turns it on and turns the volume up loud and tells Mike not to touch it, and Mike does what he’s told. He tries to focus on the broken television, focus on the running people, and pretend that this solves the problem because his grandfather likes to think it does. He pretends not to hear the yelling, pretends not to flinch every time something gets too loud. Pretend his father’s voice doesn’t make him flinch no matter the volume.

 

The sound on the television is dying and it’s hard for him to tell what the running people are saying, but it gets easier the longer he listens to it. He’s tired of the room and he’s tired of what is outside of the room, he wants to cry but that wouldn’t make matters better or worse.

 

The room is locked, physically and metaphorically. The room is locked in him.

 

It is January 1st, 2015. The room is open again.

 

 


End file.
